Fleeting
by Shanaqui
Summary: The unexpected moments are to be treasured most of all. BalthierxFran.


Fran knew when she left the forest that she was leaving all permanence behind. All the things the humes think permanent are like the leaves of the forest: here today, gone by the next season. Admittedly, the seasons are long, but they are still seasons. She wanted to watch those seasons pass, and vowed to herself that whatever happened, she would never cling to the past -- as humes did, despite their ever-changing world.

Balthier has made her break that vow. Of course, she doesn't _blame_ him -- she never could. But he was the reason, the catalyst, the bringer of pain. It doesn't matter that he has helped her, made her happy. He has the power to hurt her: the wood has already faded for her and the hume world, in all its fickleness, is her world as much as it is.

"Fran?"

"It is nothing," she says, forcing herself not to look at him. Fearful, perhaps, of him seeing the real concern in her eyes. "Are you hurt?"

"Nothing a cure spell won't fix," he says, and so she turns and rests a hand on his injured arm, channeling the magick through her hand to heal the cut. It has barely even bled, but he still brushes at the stain on his sleeve with some annoyance. "I wish cure spells included clothing."

"At least you are not more badly hurt."

"Ah, but a cut like this isn't worth getting my shirt bloodied over. If it was a great wound, I would have an excuse."

She shakes her head. "I would rather you did not receive a great wound."

"So would I, in truth," he says, with a quick smile. He examines his gun briefly and reloads. "Well, then, which way is it now? Preferably avoiding all the furious fiends we heard tell of in The Sandsea last time we were in Rabanastre."

Fran nods slightly, closing her eyes and lifting her head as she turns into the wind. She can smell so many things on the wind: the hot stench of the city, the spices in the bazaar, the sand of the desert surrounding them, a cooking fire in the small village nearby... the monsters that lurk waiting for them. "This way," she says, and he follows her without a word.

"This place needs the Rains," Balthier says, eyeing the dusty sand rising and clinging to his clothes with distaste. It makes Fran smile inwardly, as it always does: she wonders why his clothes matter to him so much, when they're clearly only an outer facade. Perhaps, more openly than her, he wears the relics of a past life.

"They are some time away," she says, and then stops in her tracks. She tries to ignore the fear that catches at her throat, making her heart hammer. Truly, she is becoming too human. Although it is not for herself she fears -- she has never feared for herself, not under the protection of the wood, and not now. She is afraid for him. "I smell... a saurian."

"Close?"

"Not far."

"Need we cross paths with it?"

Fran turns into the wind again, trying to feel what the world is telling her. Her ears twitch a little, and she knows Balthier's eyes are on her -- that he is, perhaps, smiling. He is more patient than she would ever have expected from a hume, though. He doesn't say a word as she tests the air. "We may avoid it, if we take a longer path. I smell blood... perhaps it has been wounded, or has recently fed."

"Do you think we should risk it?"

She's not sure whether she should feel so honoured to be trusted by a hume. She almost wants to touch him as she turns to him again, to make sure this is all real. She does not. "It would be a long battle, should we run into it. A risky one."

"I will take care of you," he says, with a hume's misunderstanding of the issues.

She smiles, though. "No. I will take care of you."

He laughs at that, startled and somehow pleased. "Perhaps. Perhaps we should take the long way round... we are pirates, after all, not hunters. And you seem to me to be worried."

"I am not," she says, though she feels naked and transparent in a way she had not thought to feel since Jote last looked through her, with all the knowledge of her the wood had, and told her to begone, if she was so eager to go. "But still, let us take the longer path."

Balthier nods. He polishes his gun a little with his sleeve and then lets her take the lead, picking a safe way through the desert. She does her best to steer their steps away from the saurian, and wonders at how much Balthier trusts her. Such trust there was in the wood, a co-dependence, perhaps. A comfortable and easy union, in any case, a union Fran has sorely missed. She would not like to be alone now.

"It is a pity this is all so fleeting," she says, and then wishes she had not said it aloud.

Balthier answers as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say: "So, then, treasure it all the more, for it will not come again. For myself, I could not live in the wood as you tell me the Viera do. Nothing happens there."

"Not... nothing. But the hume world moves fast, in comparison. Slow and steady, the Viera go, treasuring each moment. How can you treasure that which so swiftly flees?"

His hand suddenly on her shoulder startles her, and she realises she stopped. She starts to move, to walk again, but he prevents her. "Fran. Don't dwell on the future, but take each day as it comes. One day, all of this will be changed or gone. The desert will be a different shape, and Rabanastre may not stand. I will die. Do the Viera believe that makes it pointless?"

"I do not want you to die."

"But when I do, I'll be sure to leave you with many memories to treasure. _They_ will not flee."

She turns and catches Balthier's eyes. Sometimes, when he is serious like this, she suspects him of mocking her -- mockery comes easily to him, a form of bitterness deep rooted from pains he rarely voices. But all she can see is a great tenderness, and she realises that if any moment is to be treasured, this is it; unexpected as it was and quickly as it passes. 


End file.
